


Happy Birthday, Mitch

by therecognitionscene



Category: Long Exposure (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-17 20:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10601853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therecognitionscene/pseuds/therecognitionscene
Summary: Four birthdays that have sucked, and one that hasn't.





	

**Author's Note:**

> it's mitch mueller's 20th birthday and it's a glorious day
> 
> Long Exposure and all its characters belong to smokeplanet!

He wakes up and it's his fifth birthday. He can hear his mom crying in the kitchen, the sound only slightly muffled as she tries to quiet her sobs against her fist. When he walks in, eyes still droopy from sleep and his raggedy old bear clutched tight in his hand, she doesn't even notice him, so wrapped up in her grief and her ever-present bottle of nasty drink. “Mama?” He asks, his voice soft and nervous. He hates it when she cries. Henrietta sits up with a start and turns a tear-stained face to the doorway where Mitch stands, shifting from foot to foot, unsure what to do. 

“Oh, honey! I-I’m sorry, baby, did mama wake you? Look at me, what a mess.” She wipes hastily at her mascara-smeared eyes and smiles, but it's a little too wide and a little too forced to put Mitch at ease. “C’mere, Mitchy. It's my little man’s birthday today!” She reaches out her arms for him and Mitch hurries forward, letting her scoop him up and hold him close in her lap. She smells like cigarettes and the cheap perfume she always wears, but Mitch likes it. It's familiar, and comforting, and safe. It's home. 

“Whaddya wanna do today, Mitchy-bug? We could go to the park, or go for a walk, or play with your toys. Maybe we can even find some money for ice cream, hmm? How's that sound?”

Mitch wraps his thin arms around her neck and holds tight. “Is dad here?” He asks, his words quiet and small. His eyes dart around the kitchen but his father is nowhere in sight. That doesn't stop his heartbeat from racing, though, or from his body tensing at the thought of his dad. Henrietta feels it all as she holds him against her and another little sob slips out of her even as she shakes her head hard. She pulls back and cups Mitch’s cheeks between her hands, looking into his eyes. 

“No, baby, your daddy isn't here today. It's just us. We can do whatever ya want, I promise. Ok?”

Mitch looks at her for a moment, looks at the dark circles under her eyes from too many sleepless nights, looks at the bruises littering her jaw that are only barely concealed under layers of coverup. He brings one of his own hands up, small and warm, and rests it on Henrietta’s rouged cheek. 

“Ok, mama. I love you.”

“I love you too, baby. Happy birthday.”

~~~~

He wakes up and it's his tenth birthday. He was supposed to catch the school bus an hour ago, but who wants to go to school on their birthday? Who wants to go to school in  _ general _ ? He rolls out of bed and scratches at his shorn hair, stretching with a yawn as he makes his way out of his bedroom and towards the kitchen. There’s a deep rumbling in his stomach and he wonders vaguely if anyone had bothered to get groceries yet. He pulls open the fridge and is greeted by the sight of nearly empty shelves; no groceries, then. Only a few bottles of beer, a molding loaf of bread, and what he thinks is the remnants of a weeks-old tuna casserole. “Mom, we need food!” He calls out over his shoulder, wondering if he could scrape enough of the mold off the bread to get a few decent slices. There’s no response. “Mom?” Still no answer. She must be out with her new boyfriend, then. Mitch tries very hard to ignore the lump that forms in his throat at that thought.

Henrietta keeps asking Mitch to call Gary ‘dad’, but Mitch refuses. His real dad had walked out on them over two years ago; Mitch doesn’t need another jackass to fuck him and his mom up that same way. Besides, he doesn’t even like the guy all that much: sure, Gary brings home gifts for Henrietta almost everyday, and sure, he puts on a good ‘wanna be your friend, kiddo’ act, but Mitch can see through that bullshit like it’s glass. This new boyfriend is too quick to anger, too quick to raise his voice if Henrietta or Mitch displeases him. And mom? She just goes with it. Lets Gary scream at her and then goes crawling back to him at the end of the day, crying and apologizing even though she hasn’t done a damn thing wrong.

No, Mitch won’t be calling him ‘dad’ anytime soon.

He pulls out a bottle of beer with a sigh and eyes the brown liquid with distaste. He’s never liked the smell of it on his mother’s breath, never liked the way the bottles had looked clutched in his father’s hands, but he’s hungry and this is the only thing around to fill his empty belly.  With a slight struggle he pops the cap off using the edge of the counter and takes a swig, deciding that just diving in might make it more bearable.

He’s wrong.

It’s nasty, bitter and wheaty and fuzzy against his tongue. He makes a face and takes another slug, and then another, and then another, until the bottle is empty. He makes similarly quick work of a second beer and half of a third before his stomach feels full and sloshy with the alcohol. It’s given him a bit of a tummy ache but he decides that’s better than hunger pains. With his head full of cotton and his gaze unfocused--is this what beer does to you?-- he stumbles to the threadbare couch in the living room and sags down onto it. The room is spinning even though he’s no longer moving, but he sort of likes the way it feels. He looks around sluggishly and spots his stepdad’s pack of fags sitting on the coffee table. Curious, he pulls one of the white sticks out and places it between his lips. A giggle escapes him; he must look so cool. “Need’a lighter,” he mumbles to himself, fumbling for the plain Bic lighter sitting next to the ashtray. 

He burns his thumb before he’s able to figure out how to actually light the cigarette, but figure it out he does, stubborn and persistent. The first drag of acrid smoke makes him cough violently; he has to rush to the bathroom and bend over the toilet as his liquid breakfast comes rushing back up. He slumps back against the wall with a groan when he’s finished vomiting, pale and trembling ever so slightly. This time he’s careful to only take a small drag. It’s not so bad, then, the smoke that sits in his lungs before he lets it out in a shaky exhale. 

By the end of the first cigarette he’s decided he likes the taste and the feeling of filling his body with poison. He spends the rest of his day seated by the toilet, smoking his way through his stepdad’s pack. The jackass’ll probably be angry with him when he gets home, but Mitch doesn’t care. After all, it’s his birthday, right? And what’s a birthday without a gift?

Eventually the sound of the front door opening and closing reaches him, followed by the sound of his mother’s laughter, loud and braying, and his stepdad’s voice, deep and sleazy. He rubs at his bloodshot eyes and wonders if his stepdad is finally gonna snap and beat him.

“Happy birthday, Mitchy,” he mutters to himself, bringing the still-lit end of the last cigarette down onto his forearm.

~~~~~~~

He wakes up and it’s his fifteenth birthday. He wakes up because the door to his small bedroom has been kicked open and his stepdad is barging in, screaming at the top of his lungs and dragging the blankets off of Mitch with a malicious force. Henrietta is in the doorway, sobbing and shrieking and trying to drag Gary back and away from Mitch. The teenager is still half-asleep, blinking up at the scene in confusion even as a meaty fist comes down hard onto his chest again and again. He deflects the blows, but only half-heartedly; Gary hates it when Mitch fights back. He’s learned that it’s best to just accept the beating, at least when his mom is nearby and could be collateral damage. 

“You lil’ fuckin’ son of a bitch!” Gary screams, his face red with anger. “You think you can just steal from me like that? All my fuckin’ coke, gone! What’d ya do with it, you piece of shit? Didya sell it? Didya snort it all yourself? I swear to fuck I’m gonna kill ya!”

“I didn’t fuckin’ touch your shit,” Mitch yells back, curling in on himself to try and present as little of a target as possible. He’s not lying; he’d seen his mom taking Gary’s supply of coke and hiding it in her purse before she’d left one day last week. Probably sold it for heroin money; she’d always been more of a heroin girl.

But Mitch would never tell Gary that.

“Don’t you fuckin’ lie to me you cocksucker! Probably shared it with all your little fag friends, huh?! Stupid--”Punch. “Fucking--” Punch. “Useless--”

“Gary!” Henrietta is wild-eyed and desperate as she tries to pull her second husband away from her son. “Gary, he didn’t do it, it was me! It was me! I took it, I swear! Leave him alone, you’re hurting him!”

“Mom, no,  _ don’t _ ! It  was me, Gary, I took it, I did, you’re right--”

Gary lets out an unearthly snarl and rounds on Henrietta, delivering a cruel backhanded slap to her dolled up face. She falls to the floor in a sobbing heap. “You! You goddamned whore! Stay out of this, or I’ll kill you too!” He drops to one knee and raises his fist into the air, ready to bring it down on Henrietta’s dazed upturned face, but Mitch is quick.

Quicker than Gary.

His only regret is that his switchblade, driven between Gary’s shoulder blades to its hilt, didn’t kill the man. As he’s sitting in the police station with his mom later that evening, going over the incident again and again--”It was self-defense, officer, please, you have to understand, my Mitchy is a good boy”-- he’s consumed by that regret. Gary is going to live; the EMTs had said so. His one chance at ridding them of that  _ bastard _ and he’d fucked it up. 

His mom is led away by a different officer, off to answer more questions, and Mitch is left sitting at the desk of the police chief. The older man flips through the file he’s written up one more time and pauses briefly before letting out a deep exhale.

“Mitch, I can’t say for sure what’s gonna happen,” he says, and Mitch sneers at him and crosses his thin arms over his thin chest. He hates the pity he can see in the officer’s eyes. “You’ll have a trial and the judge’ll decide what to do with you. You’ll be charged as a minor, so… Hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad. Just a shame that it happened today, of all days…”

The man stands with a weary sigh and walks around the desk towards the open door of his office. He pauses ever so briefly to lay his hand on Mitch’s knobby shoulder but the teen slouches away from the touch. The officer drops his hand in defeat.

“Good luck, kid,” he says over his shoulder as he walks away. “And hey… Happy birthday.”

~~~~~

He wakes up and it’s his twentieth birthday.

And it’s been weeks since Jonas has talked to him.

The events of their last night together keeps flashing through his mind: the combined heat of their bodies as they’d lain on Joey’s bed, the dusky blush that had colored the younger boy’s cheeks, the fear he’d seen in those gorgeous brown eyes when Dean has barged in. Fuck, Joey had been so  _ scared _ , and Mitch, Mitch had been helpless to do anything about it. 

He’d tried texting Jonas a few times the day after, to apologize, to try and explain away what had happened, but Jonas had never responded. When that hadn’t worked he’d tried switching tactics to ask about their project, hoping that maybe Joey would feel obligated to text him back about their schoolwork, but still nothing. Eventually Mitch had stopped trying, afraid that he’d anger Joey or drive him further away. 

That had been sixteen days ago exactly, and every day since then has been torture for Mitch.

He wakes up every morning praying that there’ll be a new message on his phone from Spots, and every morning he gets nothing but bitter disappointment. Maybe he’s finally ruined everything, he thinks as he lays in bed, eyeing his still and silent phone. Maybe he’s finally driven Joey away for good. Maybe he’s finally fucked it up, just like he fucks everything else in his life up. Maybe….

Maybe it’s for the best.

He doesn’t deserve someone like Jonas, someone who’s so kind and patient and smart, who has so much to give when all Mitch can do is take. He’d only ever drag Jonas down, hold him back, and eventually drive him away with all his own personal demons and problems. This way, at least, he can hold on to the memory of Joey’s smile without the knowledge that he’s ruined the boy. He can cherish the ghost of Jonas’ touch without having to live with any hatred or pain he’d inevitably plant in him. He can go on living in this limbo and pretend that one day things might be ok. He can--

His phone vibrates dully on his beaten-up bedside table. Mitch considers ignoring it and rolling over to fall back into blissful unconsciousness, but eventually he caves in and grabs his phone. It’s probably just Javier sending him some stupid birthday message, which would only serve to piss him off more. Javier knows how much he hates his birthday.

He slides his thumb over the cracked screen to unlock the phone and clicks on the new message, and his heart just about stops. There, in small black lettering on the ruined surface of his phone, are three words that take him completely by surprise. Right underneath the unanswered texts from days ago are three words that has Mitch hopeful, so hopeful that his heart hurts with it.

There, in the thread of messages he shares with Joey, is a simple yet earth-shatteringly important message:

‘ _ Happy birthday, Mitch.’ _

~~~~~~~~

He wakes up and it’s his twenty-fifth birthday, and he’s  _ happy _ . Undeniably, crazily, wonderfully happy.

He shifts on the bed and is met with a soft noise of indignation. He smiles, looking down at Jonas’ sweet face as the younger man starts to wake up. “Sorry, babe,” he murmurs, stroking a large hand down Joey’s spine as he hugs him closer. “Didn’t mean to wake ya. It’s still early, go back to sleep.”

Jonas exhales through his nose and blinks his eyes open; Mitch’s heart throbs with love as he looks into the warm, sleepy gaze of his boyfriend. “Big lummox,” Joey grumbles, and Mitch laughs. Jonas stretches with a series of soft noises before settling back down in the comfortable embrace of Mitch’s arms. “Don’t wanna go back to sleep,” he argues even as he snuggles closer. “S’your birthday. We should do what  _ you _ wanna do.”

Mitch’s smile is soft, the kiss he presses to Joey’s unruly curls even softer. Their bedroom is quiet in the early-morning light; not even Bud has risen yet to seek out food and affection from his owners. Outside their apartment the world is still and peaceful. It’s a Friday; Jonas took the day off from work and they have the whole weekend in front of them. They’re meeting Henrietta for lunch but that’s still hours away, and the party Javier wants to throw him isn’t until later that night. Not that he’s supposed to know about that, since Javier wanted it to be a surprise, but Jonas had warned Mitch of the impending celebration in case he’d wanted to opt out of it. He hadn’t, though; nowadays he doesn’t mind his birthday so much, not now that he has Jonas to celebrate it with. 

“Mmmmmitch, what d’ya wanna do?” Jonas asks, kissing along Mitch’s collarbone and drawing the older man’s attention back to him. 

“We’re already doin’ it, Spots.” Jonas smiles at the nickname and steals a proper kiss from Mitch, a kiss that he’s more than willing to give away. Jonas has him,  _ all _ of him, for as long as he could want him. Which, Jonas is always sure to tell him, is forever.

Twenty-five. He never thought he’d make it to see this age, but Jonas--always Jonas, his burst of sunshine, his soft bundle of nerd, his one true love--makes Mitch hungry for life, perpetually excited for the next day and what it could bring for them.

“Y’saved my life, Spots,” Mitch whispers, his face buried in Joey’s hair.

“Hmm?” Jonas hums, almost asleep again.

  
“Nothin’, babe. I love you.”   
  
Jonas’ lips quirk up into a smile as his breathing starts to even out. “Love you too. Happy birthday, Mitch.”


End file.
